We all know the busy Tuscany of sunflowers and second homes. But there’s a rarer, remoter corner – of castles and cowboys

E
ven if you’ve never tramped among its sunflowers, you can picture Tuscany:
Siena’s broad piazzas, Florence’s pale palazzos, those curvaceous hills… But
alas, its charms are no secret to the 40 million tourists who pour into this
northwestern province each year either.

Reassuringly, there is an escape: head south, to the Maremma, the only region
(unless you count the Ancona desert) that can lay any claim to the epithet
‘undiscovered Tuscany’. You can walk it, drive it or bike it. Wanting it to
be a breeze, I go for the last option, and book a self-guided six-day tour.

I pick up my wheels at Sovicille, on the outskirts of Siena, where the
landscape is the Tuscany we know, bristling with cypresses, crowned with
sleepy ochre farmhouses – and all lightweight stuff compared to the wilder
Tuscany I will soon explore. It’s 9am on the day of departure, and awaiting
me by